Paul Pollock

IRISH ATHLETICS – 10K/HALF/MARATHON

OLYMPIC MARATHON RUNNER – EMERGENCY MEDICINE DOCTOR – DAD

Since becoming Irish national champion in his debut marathon in Dublin 2012, Paul Pollock has been a mainstay of Irish athletic teams at global championships. With over twenty Irish caps to his name, he has the highest ever finishing place by an Irish athlete at a World Championship, over both the marathon (21st) and half marathon distances (14th). He was the first Irish finisher in the 2016 Rio Olympics marathon (32nd) and already holds the qualifying time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics marathon. Paul was one of only three European athletes chosen to be an inaugural member of the elite professional ‘NN Running Team’, alongside teammates including Eliud Kipchoge (Sub 2 hour marathon) and Kenenisa Bekele.

Paul currently lives and trains in Belfast and has managed to achieve all of his athletic success whilst balancing life working as an emergency medicine doctor, as well as recently becoming a father. In 2016, he featured in the RTE ‘Road to Rio’ TV series, documenting his qualification and build up to the Olympic Games. In 2017, Paul founded the DreamRun Dublin project, in which he annually selects and coaches a group of ten Irish runners for 24 weeks towards their goal of breaking the magical sub 3 hour barrier at the Dublin marathon. In 2020, he was awarded the Belfast Sports Personality of the Year Award.

Paul represented Team Ireland in his second Olympics in Tokyo 2020 finishing in the main group of athletes of the gruelling Olympic Marathon.

2022 will be another massive year for Paul as he has qualified to run in the World Athletics Championships in Oregon USA, the European Athletics Championships in Munich Germany and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

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PAUL POLLOCK

IN THE MEDIA

Olympic Games: Pollock aiming for career-best finish in Tokyo
Much has changed for Paul Pollock since he competed in the men’s marathon at the 2016 Rio Olympics and he is hoping that a relatively clean bill of health can propel him to a career-best finish in Sunday’s race in Sapporo. The Annadale Strider was the leading Irish runner at the marathon in Rio, but he has enjoyed an altogether more routine preparation for Sunday’s marathon. Back in 2016, Pollock’s selection as part of the three-man Irish team was overshadowed somewhat with Sergiu Ciobanu appealing his omission from the team and bringing a case to the Court of Arbitration (CAS).
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PAUL POLLOCK

IN THE MEDIA

‘It’s one of my biggest regrets in running’: Olympic pain fuelling Paul Pollock’s Tokyo dream
It’s one of the cruel ironies of top-level sport that effort, all too often, does not align with reward, no matter what the inspirational captions say on Instagram. The relationship between the two is one that leaves the best performers — driven, type-A personalities that they typically are — sometimes scratching their heads. For some, the downfall is not a lack of commitment or a phobia of any hard slog, but a failure to learn the precise location of the line separating supreme fitness and physical failure.
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